May 5, 2023 at 2:00 PM - Athletic Committee Meeting

Discussion:  Mr. Nick Davis called the Athletic Committee meeting to order at approximately 2:00 p.m. 

Discussion:  Davis asked King to lead off on the Pledge after the moment of silence. 

Discussion:  Davis asked for a motion to approve minutes from last meeting. King made the motion and Davis with the second. 

Discussion:  Davis introduced this agenda item. Stepp said that he and Patton had been working on this for a while. He turned it over to Patton for info on the particular sports.  He said TMSAA breaks this down into 3 timeframes. Fall, Winter, and Spring seasons. He said basketball has a winter timeline so they would have to line their basketball teams up with their schedule. Patton said they would put JV there also, so JV and Varsity would be added to the TMSAA schedule. He said volleyball would be moved to the fall in TMSAA. Softball would have to move to spring. Cross Country would have to move to the Fall for varsity. He said the challenges would be getting the facilities usage but he didn't see that being a problem. Davis asked if they are prepared to take the next steps? Stepp said yes, they are waiting right now for the budget to be approved. Membership fees have been proposed to be put into the athletic budget. He said if it's passed by the board, he can move forward with the decision. 

Discussion:  Davis moved into this agenda item and asked by what means do they access the athletic facilities and how often? Stepp said this would be a good time to create feasibility studies on infrastructure, gym schedules and upkeep of fields. Davis said they are trying to find new opportunities to support student athletes and administrators. Davis asked what recommendation could be made outside of the feasibility study? Internal or employ someone to conduct the study? Stepp said he would check with Kim Chamberlin of Uplands Design if he could recommend a person who would know exactly how to do that. Davis asked what should be the next time to check on that? Stepp said he would know after he talked to Chamberlin. 

Discussion:  Davis introduced this item. He said the subcommittee is allowing them to make recommendations to the steering committee for the strategic plan. Stepp said the BOE began the strategic plan in January and part of the vision includes athletics, so it's part of the core beliefs of the strategic plan. He said some of the opportunities within the plan are TMSAA, a measuring stick for the expectations and guidelines for the coaches, the ability to attract and retain high-level coaches. He said parental involvement is also huge and they would like to create parental engagements so they are aware of what their child is fully involved in.  

Discussion:  Davis introduced this agenda item and said they had initially asked what each team's financial obligations were. He said that number fell between $350,000-$600,000 of support being provided. Funded by booster clubs and outside school monies. He then asked what they were going to do with that information? What do they have for finances? Stepp told him that they had a budget for county AD and supplements for high school AD's. Bray told everyone the district would be paying out over $500,000 for athletic supplements this year. Based on information given to her by Patton, she will budget $561,000 for this year. Davis asked if there was any information on how to navigate that as they headed into budget season? Stepp said they want to allocate money for each sports team and they would make that recommendation to the budget committee. King said if information was to be provided to the committee and the board, they would need details. 

Discussion:  Davis introduced this item and said it had come to his attention that all coaches are required to be faculty unless they had a CCBOE employee sponsor. He asked how to create a pathway that causes people to leave when they can't get a sponsor, should they not be faculty. Stepp said they would recommend adding a line to the policy that if you are a level 3 then you don't have to have a faculty sponsor. He asked if that addressed Davis' concerns. Davis said yes. Patton said they do not have enough employees to coach particular sports, so they have to get outside sources, but then coaches are still required to stay with them and get no extra pay. King said if these are volunteers, are they not paid? Stepp said they would receive supplements. King said once they are paid, do they become our employees? Bray said no, they are 10-99 employees. Davis asked if anyone had anything else to say? Brown said even non-faculty coaches will be required to go through coaching ethics classes, even if they go through TMSAA or TSSAA, it will be equitable and in addition to our required background checks. 

Discussion:  Davis asked if there was other discussion? Brown asked if there was a timeline where they would notify the community of the decision to go with TMSAA if they went that route. Davis said he would refer that to Stepp. Stepp said the coaches all agreed that the dead period in the summer would be the best time to transition. Davis asked if there was more information needed to make the decision to say the dead period IS the date? Stepp said the dead period would be the date, but he and Patton are still researching with coaches what seasons would be best. He said there are several variables that they will have to work through and they are doing that. Last week of June/first week of July would be the dead period and would be the goal. Mayberry asked if the district is going full-blown middle school? Stepp said it was 6-8. She said that is confusing because is basketball going to have middle school teams or will it be elementary JV and Varsity that will follow TMSAA rules or both? Stepp said you will still have an elementary JV season and a varsity season. He said the goal is that every sport is under the same governance. Mayberry said if she has a 6th grader is not varsity ready but could get a tremendous amount of courtime on her JV team. Under middle school rules, she can't put them on there. Patton said yes she could. As long as the 6th grader only plays on the JV team and doesn't play on variety, they are in no violation.  Mayberry asked if a 5th grader is just as good as an 8th grader, what would happen. Patton said TMSAA won't let that happen. It's just 6-8. Keeping the 2 groups separate is a major bylaw. 
Mosely said if they are waiting until July to make this switch they will be asking for kids to play if he has tryouts in the next 2 weeks. He said that if Pine View and Crab Orchard will be co-oping then he's sure others will run into that as well and he just wanted everyone to be aware of that. Davis said that trying to make that clean break will be complicated.  Patton said they are developing safety nets and making every preparation to go with TMSAA. If they don't go this route during the dead period, they will revert back to normal and the coaches can have another tryout. He said he always encourages his coaches to always have more than one tryout (one spring and one fall) due to kids moving into the district in the middle of the year.  Davis asked what hard day do we have that tells us we can't move forward with traditional co-op. Stepp said again there are a lot of different variables. Patton said they are preparing that it's a go and if something happens that it doesn't happen, they will go back to normal schedule and will have plenty of time to schedule and plan tryouts. King asked how co-oping would affect the community and also cheerleaders. Stepp said that Beaty and Spicer had both reached out to their parents and they were on board with this and what it would look like for their teams. Stepp and Patton also said that cheerleaders would be taken from both schools. Sitton asked if this goes through with TMSAA, what does the post-season eligibility look like? Patton said there's a state tournament played in the second week of February and they will most likely make us our own region. We will play the county tournament and then advance to the state competition. Wade asked if the co-op would exclude private Christian schools? Patton said once they become a member of TMSAA they would petition them to become a co-op with one of our schools. Under local governance, the Christian school students co-op'ed with the county and those students played with the school they would have been zoned for if they were in our district or homeschooled. 
Davis asked if updates to the AD job description had been updated as previously discussed. Stepp said he needed to work on that and they could talk through that. 

Discussion:  King made a motion to adjourn the meeting. Davis with the second. The meeting was adjourned at approximately 3:21 p.m.